Sourdough: The Local-Community Starter Kit (proposal)

Local WordPress communities could benefit from having access to a basic business infrastructure that enables ongoing, non-event community activities. A local-community starter kit like this could serve as a catalyst to further democratize WordPress community organizing.

Members of our community rounded up a long-ago-registered domain name, found a web host, created a MailChimp mailing list, and launched a simple website that 1) guides folks to our local WordCamp, Meetup, and Slack sites and 2) offers a sign-up for the new Mailchimp list.

Some members of the community immediately raised concerns about the ongoing administration and governance of the new entity:

Who controls the domain-name registration?

Who has access to the website? and how do they decide which level of access other users have?

Who pays for the web hosting?

Who owns the email list?

Which email addresses are associated with the community’s social-media account logins and who has access to them?

Where do we deposit the check when a local sponsor offers to support the entity?

What is the entity, legally? We all know what a “community” is, but goverments and tax collectors don’t recognize it.

Ours is a friendly, professional, and responsive community, but what if an account holder became incapacitated? what if a key community leader moves? what if a bad actor were to get control of an account login?

These are all valid concerns, but they need not prevent a local WordPress community from creating a new entity alongside the current Meetup and WordCamp programs.

Proposal

I propose exploring the feasibility of a WordPress Community Support-backed program (tentatively called Sourdough) that would provide support for the creation, development, and administration of a very basic local WordPress community infrastructure.

Much of the proposed technical and administrative infrastructure already exists as support mechanisms for the current WordCamp and Meetup community-event programs. But there would be some additional development and, possibly, staffing needs, hence the request for WordPress Community Support help.

Like any good program, Sourdough introduces at least one new acronym, the LCO, Local-Community Organizer (or LOCO, if we want to allude to the sometimes crazy-making nature of community wrangling).

Program Components

The components of the proposed basic infrastructure:

a new role – Local-Community Organizer – much like current event-organizer roles; vetting for this role could be fast-tracked for existing Meetup and WordCamp organizers

a community email address (one address for all social-media and other account logins) accessible both to the Local-Community Organizer(s) and to super-admins at WordPress Community Support

a domain-name registration service

website hosting

a mechanism for granting access to the community’s website, email list, Slack administration, and social-media profiles to vetted community members (such vetting could be administered by the LCO at the local level)

a virtual inventory system (could be as simple as a Google Docs sheet) to track swag, lanyards, print collateral, and other community property, which may reside in many different physical locations

A deluxe version of the infrastructure might also include:

a PO box or mailing service to give the community a physical address

a small storage facility for leftover swag, print collateral, etc., which could also serve as a receiving facility for exhibitor shipments to WordCamps and other local events

a group password manager like LastPass or 1Password to more precisely and securely grant and control access to community accounts

Program Benefits

Benefits to the local community:

one-stop shopping for local event and other community information

creates a portal for recruiting into the local WP community members of the broader local community (articles on how to get involved, what WordPress is, what a WordCamp is, what happens at meetups, etc., examples of which could be collected and shared at make.wp.org)

cross-promotion opportunities for existing community event programs

ability to build an opt-in email list of local community members who are interested in both current and future WordPress-related events, activities, and announcements

ability to showcase community members on the community website (directory or similar non-promotional listing, equally accessible to all community members)

non-promotional community blogging on topics of interest to the local community

create a community legacy archive documenting the background and history of the community and sharing its lore – sort of like the old “newspaper of record”

ability to engage event-averse introverts with a way to virtually and anonymously participate in the community

create virtually accessible local special-interest groups for folks not mobile enough to travel to meetups and other events (kids, seniors, disabled, etc.)

maintain a minimal community presence if there are not currently active Meetups or other events

Benefits to WordPress Community Support:

similar community-building and -nurturing benefits as existing event programs

proactively and preemptively manage potentially messy issues around account access and other local community-resource stewardship issues

Conclusion

I know how stretched for time community members are, so not expecting immediate action. I just want to get this idea out there and see what even-better ideas folks in the community might have on this subject.

Larry & I are co-chairing this year’s WordCamp in Seattle. We’ve been working on this for many months. One of the motivators is the reality that each year folks opt-in to be notified about that year’s WordCamp but to reach previous attendees we must log into previous WC websites. We wanted a single opt-in for year-round communication.

It was my suggestion that since we already have a person vetted & approved why not just modify their role to include this LOC responsbility, rather than create yet another volunteer role.

Also, our plan is to create a directory of local members what offer WP services. That’s still in the planning stages but another community-building element to having a “portal” website.

We were fortunate to have one of our Meetup organizers step-up to both design and host our new portal site. I think it’s helpful that it’s self-hosted which allows for more freedom of design and tools.

I like this idea a lot. Our meetup has had its own website (hosting donated by Pagely) since 2009. We don’t have a separate business entity for it: I registered the domain name and signed up for the hosting, and pay for the domain registration out of sponsor money, as declared on our sponsors page.

Right now I’m the one who ends up posting the slides and doing all the management. If we had an actual job description that included various responsibilities and processes, it would be much easier to set someone up as an emergency fallback and also to allow someone else to step up and take over the job.

I also have a business card for the meetup that’s on the back of my own business card. It points to our own website and our meetup.com website. (It needs updating, but then, so does my own card. I bought 1000 of them in 2011 and am waiting until I run out.)

Anyway, I’m happy to talk to anyone who wants to hear what we’ve done and how. Also, I know the SF Meetup has a website, though they are not part of the community program, or weren’t when I last checked. They also have a Slack account, as does the Sacramento WP community. (I’m of two minds about creating one for the East Bay group: I’m not sure how many people would use it vs. the mailing list, and it would mean something else to keep track of. I suppose I should ask the members.)

I’m kind of embarrassed that we missed your site as we looked for models. You’re doing amazing stuff there. That Meetup intro video, in particular, is very engaging. I can see that all by itself roping folks in.

FWIW, we have a Slack account here in Seattle, and it’s pretty well used. We have very active channels for our WordCamp and Meetup programs, with both public and organizer channels for each, as well as #business and #developer channels, and even a fairly well-used #watercooler channel.

It good that we are having the discussing but I like to see the best in people and not create extra bureaucracy when not needed. For that reason I am normally happy to give anyone access to social media or the website if they need/ask for it.

Giving multiple people access does not solve the problem of loosing the accounts as one of the admins can easily remove other people’s access.

Generally I feel that is very important that there are at least two people leading a meetup. I was very lucky that I had someone else join me about a year after the meetup started to help out. This has taken a lot of stress off me. For me it is more to do with working on a culture of collaboration instead of a single group owning the community.

I created a basic site to add the summaries of our meetups so that others can profit if they are unable to attend and also build a bit of content to rank better on Google.

I sponsor the costs for the domain name and I host the site on my account with Siteground. If need be in the future I suppose I could move the site to host that is willing to sponsor the hosting.

The proposal seems to be quite specific to the US which is understandable but something you need to be aware of in the discussions.

The entities will be different depending on the countries. I know that France have a registered social club that they use for their finances. Though recently we were discouraged from creating something similar in Switzerland by the community team.

From my experience a number of people in Europe have struggled with the centralisation of the community in the US. There is a certain feeling of losing control by transferring the domain to a central registry or having a central hosting platform.

The German speaking community has a central website where it list all of the meetups and their events. In 2015 that website was successfully transferred from an individual to the Frankfurt Meetup group who manage and maintain the site.

The thing that I feel the Swiss community can work on is a mailing list.

Hmm, I am probably stepping on a few toes here. I was wondering why there isn’t a WordPress multi-site instance for Meetups. It would make the whole access credentials administration be so much easier. And with RSS feeds support via social media for each meetup could be somewhat automated and coordinated. I know of a few meetups who have their own websites… Maybe I haven’t fully thought this through. I know we considered something like this when we discussed the microgrant process at WCEU Contributor day…

I did belatedly (as in, this morning) think of that possibility–that WPCS could set up a central website for meetups the way they do for WordCamps. It’s possible that people who have already set up their own sites would find it restrictive, but it could make things easier for meetups that don’t yet have their own sites and are facing the problems inherent in registering domain names and setting up hosting.

Community Deputy Program

Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Here are some useful links about the program: